Margate mobile home park to be site of housing project

A new housing community will be built on the site of one of the city's last mobile home parks.

The City Commission has approved rezoning to allow Aztec Estates, a 102-acre mobile home park, to become a 707-unit development. The new gated community - which does not yet have a name - will consist of 93 single-family homes, 468 townhouses and 146 condo units, according to the zoning application.

The development will be south of Southgate Boulevard, on the east side of State Road 7.

"It's going to be a very nice development," said former state Rep. Jack Tobin, lobbyist for Uniprop Manufactured Housing, which owns the site. Tobin said the development will have a "myriad of price ranges from affordable housing to maybe $300,000- to-$350,000 townhomes and single-family homes."

A construction date is not set yet; Tobin said the owners are taking a wait-and-see approach, in part to see when the housing market improves.

In addition, "everything is on hold until [Uniprop officials] find a partner or sell the project," Tobin said.

While the city awaits the new development, people displaced from Aztec said the move was traumatic.

That includes resident Patti Pye, who moved into Aztec with her husband less than two years before getting their notification letter to leave. The Pyes, who live off their Social Security checks, sank $65,000 of their savings into a three-bedroom trailer with a 9-by-12-foot master bathroom.

Last October she moved out, her manufactured trailer separated into two pieces and hauled four miles away into another Margate trailer park. Her carpeting was cut in half so one piece, which included the master bedroom and bathroom, could go first. The next day, the rest of the trailer - including the dining room, kitchen and second bedroom - was loaded on a truck and driven to its new spot.

During this time, the Pyes stayed at their son's friend's condo in Pompano Beach. They lived there a month until water and electricity could be hooked up to their trailer and inspected.

"We were very fortunate," she said. "If we didn't have that place to go, we would have had to be paying in a motel for a month. All your life's savings right down the drain."

She said her neighbors moved to mobile home parks in north Broward and Davie.

"Some went to live with relatives, their homes were too old to move, and others went into rental apartments," she said. "People were just frantic. They were cussing up a storm, they cussed those people at Aztec. They said 'We lived here 20 years and this is what we get? We get booted right out of here?' "

Aztec Estates at one time had 645 home sites, but only about 184 were occupied last year when Uniprop notified residents of the pending change.

Tobin attributed the loss of residents to damage from Hurricane Wilma in 2005 and attrition.

"It was a loser for Uniprop to continue to operate as a mobile home park," he said. "People aren't buying mobile homes like they used to."

Aztec residents aren't alone in being forced to make a change for growth: 243 owners evacuated the Rancho Margate mobile home park off State Road 7 last year so 412 townhouses could be built. Permits are pending for construction to begin there.

This leaves Pye's new home of Coral Cay, formerly known as the Colonies of Margate, as the last remaining mobile home park in the city.

Lisa J. Huriash can be reached at lhuriash@sun-sentinel.com or 954-572-2008.